CHAPTER XXIII.
A GATHERING OF THE GODS.
Before real greatness comes to either man or woman, as a rule, old age has crept upon them, robbing them of their bodily strength and youthful graces, and making them uninteresting in the extreme. Now and again a youth may leap into popularity, but it is rare that nature produces infant phenomena where great thoughts and great conceptions are concerned. Great minds are of turgid growth. We might imagine a youthful Raphael, but it is hard to picture a youthful Rembrandt or Titian.
The guests of Hesperia and Imenus were some of the greatest that the ages of art and letters have ever produced, yet Philip could not get up the awe for them that he might have felt towards greybeards, and none appeared older than twenty-one or twenty-two. There names, besides, were totally unknown to him, as more than likely will be the names of Shakespeare, Milton, Rembrandt and others of their kidney twenty thousand years after this. Most of the celebrities present had flourished cycles of centuries before his time on the plane of mortality.
Yet it was a brilliant company which had assembled
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